I’ve only eaten in The Brick Oven at lunch times so I can’t comment on the evening menu. However if the lunch menu is anything to go by I can’t see there being any problems.

The menu is fairly standard for a bistro restaurant with a range of pizzas, in two sizes, plus hot baguettes, salads and some pasta and fish dishes. The most unusual item is the Quesilladas which is a tortilla that’s been heated, the ingredients (cheese, smoked chicken etc) placed on top and then folded to seal it all in. Finally it’s turned over to cook on the other side; delicious! The pizzas too are very good having been prepared on a nice thin base and then, like everything else, cooked in the brick oven. You can watch the chef preparing the food from the eating area and the logs burning at the back of the oven make a nice feature.

The Brick Oven restaurant is situated at the Cork end of the main square in Bantry just next to the Garda Sation and is an excellent place to eat.

I would not normally have chosen to stay in the Ballymun Plaza; but a combination of a conference at Dublin Airport and a weekend break deal from Supervalu swayed me in the direction of this hotel.

Initial impressions were far from encouraging; the ground floor retail units weren’t completed giving the hotel a half finished look; but these were not as discouraging as the completely run down surroundings the hotel has been built in. Ballymun was renowned for its poor social housing and whilst the tower blocks have been demolished the hotel is surrounded by large tenement blocks, some of which are still occupied and some boarded up; and the whole area speaks of decline and deprivation.

Having seen the area then only thing that persuaded me not to look for somewhere else was the provision of a secure underground car park.

Check in was very slow, despite having emailed the hotel a few weeks before to ensure we’d have a family room we still had to wait in reception while the house keeper searched empty rooms for one with a single and double bed. The room itself was clean; but very basic. There were complimentary tea / coffee facilities in the room; but the kettle was mounted half way up a wall in a very inconvenient position to use. The furnishings in the room had to have been the most basic of any hotel I’ve been in.

We’d booked a table for dinner when we checked in; but when we went down to the restaurant we were asked to take dinner in the bar – something that I refused to do as I didn’t want my seven year old daughter in the bar that that hour of the evening. Having insisted on a table in the restaurant we were shown to a table for two (there’s three of us in case you’d forgotten), perhaps the waiter couldn’t count. Anyway there were plenty of tables for four available so I selected one and we sat down to eat.

The food was quite reasonable, and if anything this was the one redeeming feature of the hotel. Nothing exciting, I ordered Chicken Supreme and got Chicken Kiev; but it was well cooked and nicely presented. The breakfasts too where very tasty.

Noise at night was also a problem. Being a hotel I always expect some noise with guests coming and going. However both nights we stayed were punctuated by both guests and staff yelling up and down the corridors and guests repeatedly slamming doors. Desperate.

One final thing; I wondered why the fire alarm sensor in our room was covered in a plastic bag thus rendering it useless.

I bought this wireless cycle computer to go with my new bike for two reasons. One was the fact that it had lots of functions and the second was the fact that it said on the box that it was suitable for mountain bikes. Also it wasn’t cheap so I thought (erroneously) that it had to be good.

So I installed it, which was fiddly; but no more so than a wired cycle computer. The instructions specified a maximum of 18 inches (1.5 feet) between the top of the sensor and the display unit. However at that distance no signal was being received by the display unit.

Tests showed that unless the sensor was 14 inches or less from the display unit then the signal was lost. On a mountain bike with a 20 inch frame this distance is impossible to achieve.

So I’ve been unable to check out the functions of the Comp 150 because it didn’t do what it said it would do; support 18 inches between sensor and display.

Hust in passing I found the Topeak web site attractive to look at; but lacking is useful information. The FAQ section of the site didn’t work at all and there was no troubleshooting section that I could find.

The course is run by The Social and Health Education Project in Cork, lasts six months from September to May and consists of a 2 1/2 hour meeting each week plus several weekend workshops. The groups are a reasonable size (the one I attended started out at 17) and there are two trained facilitators. The course starts gently with introductions and setting the ground rules for the next six months, things like confidentiality and respect for the other group members, before moving on to develop listening skills.

Over the next six months we studied a wide range of areas including managing emotions, assertive communication (three full days on this), stress, exercise, interplay of relationships and the super-ego. All the work is experiential, there’s no note taking and very little in the way of handouts; but I found that this did not detract from the learning experience.

Personally I found the course immensely beneficial. I’ve gained a much deeper understanding of myself and the ways in which I interact with other people. I’ve gained more confidence and now have strategies to recognize and deal with my super-ego when it criticises or judges me. All in all I would thoroughly recommend this course.